JQDataTablesPlugin

JQuery based progressive enhancement of tables

Overview

This plugin implements a widget to enhance normal HTML tables with extra navigation features such as sorting, filtering and paginating through datasets. The %DATATABLE macro is specifically tailored towards datasets created on the base of DataForms. It lets you easily compile an overview of data of that kind stored in a web as well as select specific records for further use in wiki apps.

JQDataTablesPlugin can be used in two distinct ways:

• by means of the %DATATABLE macro
• by means of HTML5 and JSON to enhance HTML tables directly

%DATATABLE takes a pointer to a DataForm definition and then creates a table based on the known formfields in that definition to create columns of a kind matching the formfield types. It then uses a connector fetch the data from the backend. There are several kinds of connectors available at the moment based on the additional functionality installed on your Foswiki:

• search: this one uses the normal native search feature of Foswiki also used by the %SEARCH macro
• dbcache: this one uses DBCachePlugin which is implementing a faster still native search, also available via its %DBQUERY macro
• solr: this connector uses the SolrPlugin which uses a Solr fulltext search engine integrated into Foswiki.

A default connector can be defined as required. Note however, that even though %DATATGABLE tries to hide the differences of available connectors behind the scene, connectors will behave differently, i.e. when it comes to filtering. Also, performance is vastly different with the search connector being the slowest one. It is strongly recommended that you at least install DBCachePlugin for acceptable performance in every-day usage.

DATATABLE

Using a %DATATABLE you can query a set of topics and display their structured data in a dynamic table. Results are best when querying structured data attached to your topics as each formfield defined in the DataForm directly correlates to a column in the generated table. In this case you may specify the form definition in the form parameter and formfields in the columns parameter. The %DATATABLE will then use this information to properly display formfield values as well as sort columns along the technical representation. For example a date formfield will properly be displayed according to your locale's date format while sorting by date uses date values represented as epoch seconds.

Syntax: %DATATABLE{"<query>" parameter="..." parameter="..." ...}%

Parameter	Description	Default
<query>, query	specify a search query to filter rows on the server-side; NOTE: the query language might vary depending on the connector being used, e.g. dbcache vs search vs solr
connector	connector to be used to fetch data dynamically from the backend; possible values are search (using Foswiki's native %SEARCH), dbcache (needs Foswiki:Extensions/DBCachePlugin), solr (needs Foswiki:Extensions/SolrPlugin), additional connectors may be implemented by plugins; NOTE: for general-purpose search dbcache is the best choice	defined in $Foswiki::cfg{JQDataTablesPlugin}{DefaultConnector}
class	additional css class to be added to the widget in addition to foswikiTable
width	width of table, e.g. 100% and the like
web	web to query for data	current web
form	data form definition
paging, pager	switch on/off paging data; NOTE: this parameter is deactivated when scrolling is specifed as well (see docu)	off
pagelength, rows	number of rows to be displayed when paging is enabled (see docu)	10
lengthmenu	switches on a menu element to change the page length (see docu)	[10, 25, 50, 100]
scrolling, scroller	switch on/off dynamic scrolling; data will be fetched from the backend as you are scrolling up and down; NOTE: this parameter disables paging as these two features are mutual exclusive	off
searching	switch on/off the global search box (see docu)	off
searchmode	defines how to search, either using one search box covering all columns (global), or using one search box per column (multi)	global
searchdelay	delay before changes in a search box will cause new data to be fetched from the backend	400
sort	specifies the column for initial ordering (see docu)	first column
reverse	specifies the initial ordering direction	off
info	switch on/off the info about the number of rows in the set (see docu)	off
ordering	switch on/off the ability to sort the table by clicking on a column header (see docu)	on
scrollx	switch on/off horizontal scrolling (see docu)	off
scrolly	specify vertical scrolling (see docu)	off
scrollcollapse	switch on/off collapsing of the table height on small data sets (see docu)	off
columns	comma-separated list of formfield names to be displayed; see the notes on special columns below	all formfields of the DataForm specified by form
selecting	switch on/off select extension
selectproperty	specifies the property of a row to be selected when selection is enabled	topic
selectmode	possible values are os, single, multi, this specifies the way a selection is made (see docu)	multi
responsive	switch on/off responsive extension
fixedheader	switch on/off fixed header extension
<field-name>_title	a column title for a given field-name, e.g. ProjectState_title="State"	name of the formfield as specified in columns
<field-name>_width	column width for a given field, e.g. ProjectID_width=5em

Special column names

In general column names specified in the columns parameter of the %DATATABLE parameter directly relate to a formfield of an attached DataForm. Values are displayed and sorted according the the type of the formfield. There are however a few column names that have a special meaning or trigger an additional behavior on data in this column:

• index: this is an auto-generated column enumerating the rows in a table
• Date, Changed, Modified, Created, info.date, createdate: these fields are all date fields and treated accordingly
• Topic: alias for topic
• TopicTitle: displays the TopicTitle of a topic linking to it
• By: alias for author of recent topic revision
• Creator, createauthor, info.author: author if the initial topic revision
• publishauthor: author that published the topic, defaults to createauthor in case there is no explicit Author field in the form
• publishdate: date when the publishauthor created the initial revision, defaults to createdate in case there is no explicut PublishDate field in the form
• Worflow: name of the workflow assigned to a topic
• A column name starting with a / (slash) will be excluded from any special treatment, i.e. /Author will not be interpreted as the author of the recent topic revision, but as the Author formfield of a DataForm (see below example).

Example

Below example lists all topics in the System web that have the PackageForm attached to it:

%STARTSECTION{"example3"}%
%DATATABLE{
   web="%SYSTEMWEB%"
   form="%SYSTEMWEB%.PackageForm"
   paging="on"
   searching="on"
   info="on"
   pagelength="10"
   lengthmenu="5, 10, 20, 50, 100"
   columns="index, Topic, Description, Version, Release, /Author"
}%
%ENDSECTION{"example3"}%

HTML5

A data table can also be applied to an already existing table enhancing it with additional features such as paging, client-side sorting, searching etc. This is done by wrapping your tables into a .jqDataTablesContainer div element and specify additional parameters using HTML5 data attributes

%JQREQUIRE{"datatables"}%
<div class="jqDataTablesContainer" data-paginate="true" data-searching="true" data-info="true">
| *Header* | *Header* | *Header* | *Header* |
| Data | Data | Data | Data |
| Data | Data | Data | Data |
| Data | Data | Data | Data |
| Data | Data | Data | Data |
</div>

See http://datatables.net/reference/index for a full list of all options.

<div class="jqDataTablesContainer" data-paginate="true" data-searching="true" data-info="true">
| *Header* | *Header* | *Header* | *Header* |
| Data | Data | Data | Data |
| Data | Data | Data | Data |
| Data | Data | Data | Data |
| Data | Data | Data | Data |
</div>

Example

This example generates a table dynamically using a FormattedSearch:

%STARTSECTION{"example1"}%
<div class="jqDataTablesContainer" data-paginate="true" data-searching="true" data-info="true">
%SEARCH{
  "1"
  type="query"
  topic="*Plugin"
  header="| *Name* | *Date* | *Author* |"
  format="| $topic | $date | $wikiusername |"
  nonoise="on"
}%
</div>
%ENDSECTION{"example1"}%

JQDataTablesPlugin comes with additional sorting features for specific types of data:

• numeric
• string
• date (extended to be able to parse Foswiki's default date format)
• currency
• metrics (e.g. killo, mega, giga, tera, ...)

Click on the table headers to sort the columns according to their data type.

%STARTSECTION{"example2"}%
<div class="jqDataTablesContainer">
| *#* | *String* | *Date* | *Number* | *Currency* | *Size* |
| 3 | ActionTrackerPlugin | 27 Jan 2010 - 17:07 | 1 | 1,00 | 10KB |
| 1 | AntiWikiSpamPlugin | 03 Jan 2013 - 09:07 | 10 | 10,00 | 3GB |
| 2 | RenderListPlugin | 13 May 2012 - 02:59 | 0.01 | 1,01 | 100MB |
| 5 | CommentPlugin | 10 Apr 2011 - 23:39 | 100 | 0,10 | 2024kB |
| 4 | FindElsewherePlugin | 23 Dec 2012 - 17:06 | 20 | 100,- | 0.1kB |
| 6 | JsonRpcContrib |  | 0 | -100,- | 1024TB |
</div>
%ENDSECTION{"example2"}%

Installation

You do not need to install anything in the browser to use this extension. The following instructions are for the administrator who installs the extension on the server.

Open configure, and open the "Extensions" section. "Extensions Operation and Maintenance" Tab -> "Install, Update or Remove extensions" Tab. Click the "Search for Extensions" button. Enter part of the extension name or description and press search. Select the desired extension(s) and click install. If an extension is already installed, it will not show up in the search results.

You can also install from the shell by running the extension installer as the web server user: (Be sure to run as the webserver user, not as root!)

cd /path/to/foswiki
perl tools/extension_installer <NameOfExtension> install

If you have any problems, or if the extension isn't available in configure, then you can still install manually from the command-line. See https://foswiki.org/Support/ManuallyInstallingExtensions for more help.

Dependencies

Name	Version	Description
Foswiki::Plugins::JQueryPlugin	>= 4.10	Required

Change History

25 Sep 2017:	fixed html5 data attributes
30 Aug 2017:	disabled Author auto-column; added publishdate and publishauthor auto-columns
23 Jan 2017:	don't report back an url parameter in the error message
02 Sep 2016:	added default english translation files
13 Jun 2016:	fixed parsing of dates that are already epoch seconds; improved default settings of table layout
25 May 2016:	updated to latest version of DataTables
22 Apr 2016:	implemented server-side grid widget
18 Mar 2014:	remove console.log() leftover; improve sorting date columns
09 Nov 2013:	implemented sorting for currency, and metrics
08 Nov 2013:	make it work under {NoConflict}; enable jquery-ui theming by default now; created a non-goofy default look and feel to play nicely with a skin's table design; only add DataTables support to specific tables, not all; make it configurable with declarative metadata; compress and minify plugin assets; remove files not required by the plugin; clean up controls and css classes added by TablePlugin's; added type detector for foswiki date columns
18 Jan 2013:	Initial version